X-Message-Number: 17195
Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 21:36:41 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Religion, Morality, Consciousness, Duplicates

      #17183: Morality [David Pizer]

>The comment was made:
>
> >So you consider it immoral to seek to
> >persuade people to change their minds?
>
>... since we can neither know whether religion offers eternal life nor
>can we know cryonics offers eternal life (or even merely extended life), we
>should not try to talk anyone out of either one.

I see problems with this point of view, taken far enough. Jumping off a 
100-story building may be the *only* way to eternal life, depending on the 
whim of a god who will otherwise see to it that you aren't among the saved, 
in the great hereafter to come. We have no way of knowing this is *not* the 
case. Are we therefore morally obligated *not* to try to dissuade someone 
who believes this and insists on taking the leap? (This is not entirely 
academic; suicide cults are real!)


      #17185: Replies to Jul 15-8 Cryonets [Louis Epstein]

>CryoNet - Sun 15 Jul 2001
>-------------------------
>
>     #16983: Re: Constructive Thinking Without Consciousness? [Lee Corbin]
>
>...
> >Consider the claim by some that plants feel pain.  We refute this by
>...
>Plants get injured,plants can heal.
>It is certainly in the interests of
>a plant for "awareness" of an injury
>to spread throughout its systems to
>mobilize response,

My thought is that it is really an open question what we ought to consider 
the lower limits of sentience to be. A case can be made that there is a 
quantum of consciousness in every bit that flips, however slowly.

>     #16989: Simulation, Conscious Ducks, Survival Options, Trygve [Mike 
> Perry]
>
>... Of course, a die-hard could always maintain that no amount of
> >behavior that looks like consciousness in some animal is the "real"
> >thing, but that borders on solipsism.
>
>If it's in an animal,it's the real thing.
>
>It's when it's in something created by
>an animal,that isn't an animal,that it
>can't possibly be genuine intelligence.

Well, that begs the question of what is an animal, among others. If future 
nanites copy a duck in the lab, using the usual materials (carbon, 
hydrogen, etc.), and through and through it resembles the natural bird, 
most I think would say it's a duck, therefore an animal. But what if the 
carbon-12 atoms are replaced by carbon-13, yet it still looks, walks, and 
quacks like a duck? What if all the molecules are replaced by their mirror 
images, yet it still looks, walks, and quacks like a duck? What if it 
starts to behave a little differently, but still seems to be conscious? And 
so on. You seem to be trying hard for a dichotomy here, where I see 
essentially a continuum.

>     #17001: Brains liquefy? [Mike Perry]
>
> >... A mortician my organization (Alcor) works
> >with did indeed tell me, about two years ago, that the brain will liquefy
> >if not treated. Not in the sense of just melting I'm sure, but still in
> >the sense of entering a liquefied state.
>
>Is it at this stage that the Egyptian
>mummifiers removed the brain through
>the nose,bit by bit?(A clear case of
>the inferiority of classic mummification
>to cryosuspension in the preservation
>of bodies,though it's not clear to me
>that a modern chemopreservation might
>not be much better).

I'm not an expert, but it's my understanding that (allowing for possible 
differences in approaches used over many centuries and different locales) a 
metal straw or thin pipe was pushed into the cranial vault through the 
nose, then stirred vigorously to liquefy the brain. Then the body was 
turned over so as to allow the pulped brain tissue to drip out through the 
straw. I think this was done soon after death, starting while the brain was 
still firm. (Too bad, of course, not what we do with cryopreservation!)

>     #17002: Cloning and Coming Back [Mike Perry]
>
>...
>Certainly where the original body is not
>preserved,only DNA samples and mementoes,
>use of these can produce no more than a
>clone who is well educated about the
>original's life.

Well, you should be able to produce an adult human who has the knowledge of 
the person's life, down to various details, and "knows" he is that person, 
has no doubt about it, and does not merely feel he has been "educated" 
about that person. He should "remember" being that person, which must 
involve some structuring of gray matter that ought to be understood and 
reproducible in the future. Now, it's often pointed out that there is so 
much *more* information present in a human brain than could possibly be 
stored in records, that at best such a recreated person would have only a 
very spotty recollection of past events of the original, regardless of what 
he/she "knew". I'm not sure of that, because, for one thing, memories today 
aren't all that good and contain many errors. Moreover, by filling out the 
scanty information with reasonable guesswork, it may be possible to obtain 
a "full house" of memories that are as similar to the lost originals as, 
say, the memories that might be reconstructed from an elderly individual of 
their "persona" of half a century before. Finally, there is an argument 
based on the multiverse idea, that many may not accept, though I do. It is 
to the effect that even the invention of memories under appropriate 
conditions would not create fantasy individuals, but instead people who had 
a real existence and thus can be considered authentic.

>The suggested development to adulthood of
>clones nano-educated is a fine dream that
>is well known in fiction...but for the
>education to take root it would seem that
>the person's original brain would need to
>be preserved and then wilfully discarded.

This isn't what I envision, but more like working out in advance where 
you'd have to place every atom to end up with an adult who possessed the 
education, assurance of having been the original, and everything else. (In 
principle you might work this out without having the original brain, 
depending on other sources of information.) You wouldn't go through a 
developmental process at all, except in cyberspace, in the calculations you 
did. I see nothing contrary to the laws of physics here. And "computers" of 
the future (or whatever you should call them) should be very much more 
powerful than those of today, and many other advances should be there, that 
could make this approach feasible.

>Any duplicate of me that was produced in
>such a fashion would not accurately reproduce
>my views on such matters unless it considered
>the mode of its creation to absolutely disqualify
>itself from being properly considered to be me!

Suppose, as a thought experiment, ETs contacted you today, made it 
abundantly clear that they were what they claimed to be, and informed you 
that last night they had done an experiment while you were asleep. 
Unfortunately, a mishap occurred, and the original of you was destroyed, 
but fortunately, they say, the information was backed up beforehand, a 
duplicate was made, and you are now that duplicate. What is your reaction? 
For instance, if the lost original owned a car, is it still your car or 
should it now pass to heirs? If you feel no discomfort otherwise, are you 
going to worry about it, or do anything other than just assume "you" are 
still here and carry on as before?

Mike Perry

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